Fisker Automotive reaches $1 billion in funding, adding jobs daily

Fisker Automotive, which is poised to bring it first luxury hybrid car to market, has received another $150 million in private funding, a spokesman confirmed. The latest round of investment brings the Irvine-based automaker's funding to over $1 billion since the company launched in 2007.

The funding was received last week from unnamed private investors, said Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher, and comes on top of about $325 million already raised from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Qatar Holdings LLC, and Ace Investments.

"It fully funds everything now," Ormisher said of the latest round, which will help bring the $100,000, Finland-built Fisker Karma to market in the coming months as well as the lower-priced second generation of cars that Fisker will build at a former General Motors facility in Delaware.

"We feel secure the funding is in place for (the Karma) and the next series of cars," he said. That next series of cars have been dubbed Project Nina or the N Series.

"The timing was about right, considering what the market was like over the last three years," Ormisher said regarding the time frame in which Fisker Automotive raised the capital since being founded in a small Irvine office by automotive designer and namesake Henrik Fisker, above, and a business partner. "We were pleasantly surprised that people would invest in such a groundbreaking project."

The company currently employs 160 people, "but it grows by the day," Ormisher said. The automaker in particular is bringing in engineers, but the rest of the positions are spread over "all range of disciplines."

"We've increased threefold since January 2010," he said. "The aim is to double again by the end of 2011."

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